It has always been this way; but for the hundreds of years before computers that fit in the palm of your hand that have your entire life on them, it was to ensure you weren’t bringing dangerous goods or produce into the country. It was a physical search of physical items.

The issue now is that my entire life is literally on my phone.

The issue now is that there is a 100-mile ‘border search exception’ in place. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Border_search_exception

Now, within 100 miles of the border, should CBP choose to, they can search me without a warrant and search everything in my phone, and even retain it if they’d like. If I want to challenge that, I need tens of thousands of dollars and time.

This is the very definition of an unreasonable search; but to change that we have to change the politicians and change the judiciary. It’s up to us, but until we get it changed, we may as well consider the 4th amendment a dead letter, and that means trouble for all of us.

Wikipedia's map is wrong. The "border" includes international airports. There is very little of the population that is not within 100 miles of this "border."

The map also does not show Hawai'i, which would be one green blob, there is no part of Hawai'i not 100 miles from the border. All of the New England states are similarly small enough to be completely covered, even by the erroneous picture of the physical border.

You basically get a few, mostly uninhabited spots out in the West that aren't covered.